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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Yaarel" data-source="post: 7161602" data-attributes="member: 58172">I want to stay true to the Elf archetype. They really are beautiful, they really are magic itself, they really are smart, and wise, and charismatic.(Heh, due to the reallife archetype of the Elf, it is easy to turn them  into a Mary Sue when translating them into a gaming character. But I am familiar with much of the reallife lore, and I want to have something that is recognizably a ‘true’ Elf.)An Elf also has a ‘dark’ side, literally. And when dealing with cruel humans, the Elf can become cruel, ruthless, and merciless.For Elf characters, I want to emphasize the reallife Medieval trope, how the same Elf can become angelic, beautiful and luminous to behave in ways that seem ‘Good’, or else can become beastly, grotesque and dark-dwelling to behave in ways that seem ‘Evil’. It always depends on the human group that they are engaging. Either way, the British may well have it right, that there is always a sense of play, whether it comes across as childlike enthusiasm or as sadistic jokes.It might be accurate to classify the Elf as Unaligned. But ultimately, they are servants of a higher Good purpose. They probably dislike becoming their darker self, but cant help it. Their own Elven fate is inseparable from the fates of a specific group of humans, often a family.As Player Characters, the fluctuation between Good and Evil behavior can be handled different ways. At one end of the spectrum, the DM gives the player complete narrative control. So, if they are in a mood to play a Good Elf, the player narrates how off-camera the NPC Humans are ‘being Good’ in various scenarios. If the player decides to ‘go dark’, then they explain what went wrong with their bonded NPC Humans, storytelling how how the Human interrelationships started to become more Evil. Usually, the shift is a gradual transition with a Neutral phase. But the flip can also be drastic from Evil to Good or vice-versa, if the Humans enact sudden life-altering changes of mind and heart.At the other end of possibilities, the Good-Evil fluctuation can be handled mechanically, similar to the Madness mechanic in the DMG, or the corruption points in the Tolkien campaign setting of the Adventures in Middle Earth.Or somewhere in between, with the DM creating adventures for the Elf player to save their group of Humans, and to help prevent their going dark.It depends on what kind of setting the players and the DM want to explore.</blockquote>

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